


i was afraid that you'd be afraid if i told you that i was afraid

by segmentcalled



Series: i wanna wake up with you [3]
Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Anxiety, Backstory, Break Up, Character Development, Coming Out, Communication, Compulsory Heteronormativity, Dating, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Identity, Love, Lovers to Friends, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Non-Linear Narrative, Platonic Relationships, Relationship Negotiation, Self-Discovery, Sexuality, Trans Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 21:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/segmentcalled/pseuds/segmentcalled
Summary: It’s late. They should both, by all rights, be asleep. He is, in fact, getting there, but the lamp is still on so Simone is still doing something. Pat’s bets are onAssassin’s Creedfanfiction, but really, could be anything. His back is to her, and his eyes are closed, but he feels the shift as she sits up.She taps Pat on the shoulder and says, “Patrick?” in a way that makes him instantaneously alert. He twists around to look up at her, squinting a little in the lamplight.





	i was afraid that you'd be afraid if i told you that i was afraid

**Author's Note:**

> _i was afraid that you'd be afraid_  
_if i told you that i was afraid of intimacy;_  
_if you don't have a problem with my problem,_  
_maybe the problem is simply codependency!_  
[therapy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNMp2mPN0Do), tick, tick... BOOM!
> 
> bplease watch this video it's so good and then you can picture pat and simone in their respective roles. Have I Ever Steered You Wrong
> 
> anyway: some backstory! that hopefully also makes sense without the context of the rest of the au!

It’s late. They should both, by all rights, be asleep. He is, in fact, getting there, but the lamp is still on so Simone is still doing something. Pat’s bets are on _Assassin’s Creed_ fanfiction, but really, could be anything. His back is to her, and his eyes are closed, but he feels the shift as she sits up.

She taps Pat on the shoulder and says, “Patrick?” in a way that makes him instantaneously alert. He twists around to look up at her, squinting a little in the lamplight.

She full-names him sometimes, to tease him, or get his attention, or just because two syllables flow better in a phrase, but there’s this particular tone she gets, the one that says _we need to talk_ without saying the words outright.

It’s meant good things before; it’s meant less-good things, too. Whatever it is, though, it’s important, and he comes to attention and sits up, blanket sliding down his bare chest to his hips.

* * *

> The first time he’d had a real serious talk with her had been just a few months after they met. Pat was new to New York, moved there for his previous job before Polygon, and he’d met up with a friend and some of that friend’s friends and Simone was one of the latter. They’d clicked immediately, trading oddly sexually-charged banter and riffing off each other seamlessly.
> 
> They’d kept hanging out, and maybe Pat felt a little bad that suddenly he and Simone were better friends than either of them were with the initial friend that introduced them, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. She’d been relentlessly kicking his ass at _MarioKart_ for a solid half-hour when she pulled out the _“Patrick?”_ card, tone pitching upward in a curious-nervous-tense way, unlike the relentless confidence she usually projected.
> 
> He’d hit pause and set the controller down to look at her.
> 
> She laid out a few things, including “I’d like to kiss you,” and, “also maybe more than that,” and, tossing her hair in her only outward sign of discomfort, “I’m pretty sure you’re a decent dude, but I’m letting you know upfront that I’m trans and if that makes you uncomfortable you know where the door is.”
> 
> He said something very eloquent like “cool” and “yes” and “I’d like that too” and “is there anything you need from me to make you feel more comfortable?”
> 
> She’d looked — pleased, and flatteringly not too surprised at his lack of ruffled feathers, and told him _basically don’t be a dickhead_ and they both laughed and then he asked if he could kiss her and she said _obviously, yes_, and that was that.
> 
> (That night, after he thought she was asleep — they hadn’t fucked, just made out and then decided that cuddling would be ideal and then he fell asleep and then she fell asleep and then he woke up but didn’t want to leave — he tracked down his phone, turned the brightness as low as it would go so as not to disturb her sleep, and began researching how to not inadvertently be a dickhead.
> 
> “Aww, cute, Pat,” she’d said, wrapping her arms around him and leaning her head against his arm, looking at his Google search, and he had outright _squawked_ in surprise and she collapsed into laughter.
> 
> “I thought you were still asleep,” he sighed, covering his eyes with a hand and setting his phone down, willing his heart to stop racing.
> 
> “I was, and then you started wiggling around everywhere. You can ask me stuff, you know.”
> 
> “I don’t want to sound like an asshole. I’ve — never, uh, well, actually, I think most of the things going on here are things I’ve never experienced?”
> 
> She raised an eyebrow.
> 
> “Look, I’ve hardly so much as kissed anyone before, and I grew up in all sorts of weird places and as far as I was aware everyone I knew was cisgender and heterosexual, or, uh, or very closeted, and I’m, I’m kind of starting from zero here, but I’m — I want to do this right. I like you. I don’t wanna fuck shit up because I don’t know any better. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”
> 
> She hugged him tighter. “I don’t mind, as long as it’s not coming from a place of malice.”
> 
> “Even so,” Pat said, gently running his fingers through her hair. “Feel free to kick my ass if I fuck up.”
> 
> She’d laughed at that. “Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to let you know. Do you want to make out some more, since we’re both awake?”
> 
> “Hell yeah.”)

* * *

Simone pulls her hair back out of her face, holds it in a ponytail for a moment then lets it fall.

“Pat, I think I’m aromantic.”

* * *

> They’d started dating soon after that, Facebook-official and everything. It was thrilling, first of all, to have someone who wanted to kiss him and hang out with him and cuddle up and watch bad movies with him, and just _nice_. Comforting. He had hardly made any friends yet and then Simone appeared in his life and then suddenly he had not only a friend, but a best friend and _girlfriend_, and the whole entourage of people that were her friends were suddenly his friends too, a group of people as loud and queer and friendly and wonderful as her.
> 
> They teased him, once they learned more about him, for being the requisite straight friend, the lanky dorky gothish gamerish dude that follows Simone around like a lost puppy. Which was fair, because he _did_ follow her around like a lost puppy, and he was fairly certain he _was_ the requisite straight friend, and so the teasing never bothered him, not really, because it was all in good fun.
> 
> (One time he’d accidentally overheard someone asking Simone about him. He was getting a drink and they were on the opposite side of the wall, an open doorframe between them, and he could hear everything they were saying clearly.
> 
> _Why do you waste your time with him?_ was the gist of the question.
> 
> He didn’t have to see Simone to know she’d bristled at that. Her words were tense, when she replied, like a rubber band about to snap. “I _like_ him,” she’d said. “He makes me happy. He’s sweet and funny and he’s never even _once_ wrongfooted me. He’s a hell of a lot more understanding than some of you guys, even if he is a cishet man. I don’t need your judgment on who I choose to date.”
> 
> Pat had skedaddled the opposite direction before either of them caught him eavesdropping and resolved _even fucking harder to do right by her, goddammit_.)

* * *

“Oh thank god,” Pat says, and immediately realizes this is the wrong thing to say.

_“What?”_ Simone says. Well, kind of shrieks. She doesn’t have the best sense of volume control, bless her.

Pat winces.

* * *

> They moved in together within their first year of dating. It was, honestly, nice. Comfortable. They already knew they got along well; it was even better to find out that they lived together well, too. Just having the other around, knowing that they were there — it was good. Good for both of them. Good for Simone, who was planning to leave her job and was super stressed about it. Good for Pat, who was in a perpetual state of stress, period.
> 
> They’d discuss the future a lot. What they wanted. Where they saw themselves. If they saw themselves together, five, ten, fifteen years down the line.
> 
> It didn’t take long for them to realize the answer to the last was _yes_ for both of them. It made sense. Even aside from being absolute dorks about each other, they were best friends. They’d clicked immediately when they met, but even as they got to know each other, it was like their magnetic fields aligned. They were complementary, similar and different in ways that balanced, that made them settle so easily into a relationship that their friends joked that they acted like an old married couple.
> 
> (Simone had brought it up first. She was always the braver of the two of them. She’d said it outright, _hey have you ever thought about getting married_, and his character had fallen right off the _Smash_ stage.
> 
> After she was done cackling at him and he was done lecturing her for playing dirty as she continued to laugh at him, she’d said _well? Have you?_
> 
> “Shit, Simone, I don’t know. Have we been together for long enough for that?”
> 
> “I didn’t know there was a minimum requirement.”
> 
> That’d silenced him for a long moment. He’d looked down at his hands and admitted, “I have thought about it.”
> 
> “What’d you think?”
> 
> “I think I’d like to.”
> 
> “Okay,” she said, and when he looked up she was smiling ear-to-ear, “but you gotta know I’m not changing my last name.”
> 
> That’d made him laugh, and then she said, “You can have it though, if you want,” and that had made both of them laugh enough that he knew immediately that there was no way he was going to turn the idea down.
> 
> She caught him smiling like a dumbass to himself, later that night, just standing in the kitchen getting a glass of water, and asked him what he was thinking about. He confessed he was thinking about introducing himself as _Patrick de Rochefort_ and she had said “I don’t know whether to laugh at you or kiss you,” and he’d said, “Kiss me please?” and so she kissed him silly.)

* * *

“Fuck — I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean it like that, Simone.”

“What’d you mean, then?” she says.

Pat drags a hand over his face. Looks at the ceiling. “I mean: I think I’m gay.”

_“What?!”_ she shrieks a second time, her voice jumping up an octave from _normal_ into _shrill_, and he squeezes his eyes shut and braces himself for the worst.

* * *

> He’d proposed to her properly, because that’s the done thing and anyway they both wanted pictures. They’d dragged Simone’s old roommate out with them and took way too many staged artsy pictures and gotten even more candid pictures of them giggling at each other and making stupid faces and they’d gone out to a fancy dinner — just the two of them, ditching the roommate, sorry dude.
> 
> Pat got down on one knee and confessed he couldn’t afford a ring and also didn’t have the first fucking idea what she’d want and she’d laughed at him and told him he was the least fucking romantic guy in the entire world, why’d you _lead_ with that, Patrick?
> 
> He’d said something very clever like shut up I’m so nervous and she’d touched her hand to his cheek and he took it in both of his and asked her to marry him and he _definitely didn’t tear up_ when she said yes and he brought her hand to his lips and kissed her ring finger and she _definitely wasn’t teary-eyed_ when he looked up at her.
> 
> (Pat tried really hard not to smile like a doofus for the rest of the evening. He failed miserably, but to be fair, so did Simone.
> 
> The wedding was a quiet thing. Just family, close friends, untraditional in more than a few senses of the word. Simone had shoved him affectionately with her shoulder and said, “God, not even getting _married_ can get you into a suit and tie.”
> 
> He’d rolled his eyes and said _sue me_ and she said _I just might!_
> 
> He’d never been so happy in his life. This was his best friend, his girlfriend, his fiancee, soon to be his _wife_, and she wanted to spend time with him, to stick around. To keep sticking around. He’d never been with someone he felt so safe with, so known by, not friend nor family nor partner. If there was anyone in the world he felt truly comfortable around, it’d be her. Entirely. Always. So of course this was the path for them to follow. Of course it was.)

* * *

Nothing happens, so he keeps talking, fast, panicked, _terrified_ she’s going to take this the wrong way. “I mean — fuck — it’s not because — Simone, you know it’s not —” and he doesn’t know how to say this and he doesn’t know how to say any of it, how do you tell your _wife_ that you’re not in love with her and maybe never were and how come she can keep herself together, why isn’t she on the verge of tears like he is, he’s about to totally freak out.

And then she hugs him.

“I know, Pat,” she says, and he hugs her tight. “It’s okay. You’re right, it does work out well.”

She’s so much more _sensible_ than he is. She always has been, much as she pretends not to be sometimes.

“How long have you known?” she says.

“I — fuck. I don’t,” Pat says into her shoulder. “I don’t know.”

She hums in understanding.

“What about you?”

“I’ve wondered on and off for a long time,” she says. She tucks Pat’s hair behind his ear. “But you’re my best friend, Pat. I didn’t want to, like, break your heart or something?”

“Considerate,” he says, with a short huff of a laugh. “Was something the tipping point?”

“I don’t know,” she says, which means that he sits quietly, holding her as she holds him, and waits her out until she finds her words. “I didn’t want to lie to you. I couldn’t — like, I couldn’t keep denying it. I’m still bi. I just… can’t do romance. Which sounds like maybe it’ll be less of a problem than I was worried about?” she says, sitting back to cup his face in her hands. He leans into the touch.

“Maybe so,” he says. Now it’s her turn to wait him out. God damn it. She knows him too well. “I was afraid to tell you I was thinking about it because I was worried you’d — I don’t know — I was worried you’d think I was — I was afraid you’d think I was staying with you for the wrong reasons.”

“Delicately put,” she says, and pats him on the shoulder. He dares a glance at her face; she doesn’t look mad, or even upset. She’s smiling a little, actually. “Give yourself some credit, Pat, I know you’re a better person than that.”

“Still,” he says. “It’s, uh. I mean. Everyone joked at me about being the straight friend for so long, you guys even do it at work, like, it’s just part of the narrative, I’m the straight man to the comedy and the straight friend in the camaraderie and I never even gave myself space to think it might be different, fuck, why am I _crying_,” he says, dragging the back of his hand over his eyes.

“It’s okay, Pat, for _real_ it’s okay! You’re allowed to be straight-married for a couple years and then realize you’re not straight, just like it’s okay for me to be bi-in-a-different-gender-marriage for a couple years and realize I’m not romantically into you either.”

“Should’ve known you just wanted me for my dick,” he dares to tease, and she bursts out laughing and tackles him, knocks him over and then just hugs him.

“You’re so rude! Why are you like this!”

“I have to joke to cope, it’s the only way.”

“I know, Pat,” she says. She knows so very much of him and yet holds none of it against him, choosing always to believe the best in him, over and over again, even when he’s not sure he deserves it. That he’s ever deserved it.

He rolls over onto his back and sighs, presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I just feel like — like, how did I not know? What took me so long? We’ve been together for, fuck, _ages_, and it took me this long?”

“I have some guesses,” Simone says. “But tell me how you came to it first.”

He fumbles for words, at first. “I thought I might be asexual or something, for a while,” he says. “‘Cause I read some stuff and it matched up, at least a little. Like how you can enjoy sex even if you’re not sexually attracted to your partner. And I was — uncomfortable with how that resonated. Like, I mean, I’ve never — y’know — really not liked it, I’d never fake it.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” she assures him. “I wouldn’t either.”

“Uh, _yeah_, I know this from _experience_,” he says, and she laughs. “But I was like, I mean, Simone’s my best friend, I love doing anything with her, ‘cause I do, I’d do anything you wanted to, just because I like being around you. So I didn’t — I was like, why bother questioning it? But I couldn’t stop, like, thinking about it. And I was like, fuck, do I like actively want to have sex? And the answer to that is, like, yes for sure. And then I was like, well do I actively want it _with_ anyone or is it just I like how it feels or if it’s not just that then who do I want it with?”

“Did you come up with an answer to that one?”

Pat takes a deep breath and sighs it out slowly. “Yeah, fuck, I guess I did,” he admits.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He hesitates. She takes his hand and holds it tight.

“You can tell me,” she whispers. “I’m your best friend, no matter what. Nothing you tell me right now is going to change that, or what I think of you. I promise.”

“Simone, I’m gay,” he says, so quietly, staring at the blankets, and she immediately pulls him into a suffocatingly tight hug.

“I’m so fucking proud of you,” she says, and then he can’t hold back the tears any longer.

* * *

> Simone started at Polygon before he did, by about half a year. He twirled her around the living room in excitement when she got the job; she tackled him into a massive bear hug when he did, too. It was like all his wild intangible dreams were coming true one after another.
> 
> When he met Griffin and Justin for the first time, they knew him primarily as _Simone’s husband_, and Griffin had wiggled his eyebrows at Simone and said _hey you’re right he’s not too bad_ and Pat had groaned and they’d all laughed and he didn’t even, as it turned out, need to be anxious about meeting them because they were nice and funny and just as welcoming as every single other person that he worked with now.
> 
> (No one was even weird about them being together and being coworkers, which was also nice. They might get the occasional teasing, but just as friends would do, just Griffin trying to make Pat blush or Allegra trying to make Simone laugh. To be fair, they also were never the sappy type; if anything, they referenced it less than anyone else did, now that everyone knew Pat and Simone didn’t have to refer to him as _my husband_ when she talked about him.
> 
> God, it never stopped feeling absolutely wild that someone as incredible as her wanted to be with him, that she’d talk about him when he wasn’t around, that she’d smile when she saw him and let him join in her conversations so he didn’t look as massively awkward as he always felt.
> 
> They never had to go it alone, not if they didn’t want to.)

* * *

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I went and stomped over your whole goddamn coming-out with my — with my bullshit.”

“No! No, not at _all_. Look,” she says, stroking his hair, “I was trying to, like, figure out how to hedge it, how to let you still be in love with me and make things work, hoping I didn’t make our whole relationship implode, and then it turns out that that’s not the case at all and frankly, Pat, I am relieved that that is not what we have to worry about. This, we can handle. This, I know how to deal with. So we’re mutually not the right people for each other. That’s fine! That happens. That’s totally normal.”

“We got our asses kicked by compulsory heteronormativity. Or. At least I did.”

“I think I might’ve caught the backswing, or something. But, you know, when you’ve never felt anything like either before, this sort of platonic love — I don’t think it’s hard to mistake it for romance.”

“You’re right,” Pat says. He squeezes her hand. Pauses. “Uh. Question for you.”

“Are we gonna stay married?” she asks, for him, because of course she knew what he was going to ask.

“God,” Pat sighs. “Not even thirty and divorced already.”

Simone laughs. “Hey, I won’t blow up your spot if you don’t blow up mine.”

“I just finally got my name changed on everything,” Pat whines.

“You could keep it, it’s cooler than _Gill_.”

Pat pouts at her, and she pats his cheek.

“There, there. At least we can handle this like mature and responsible adults on our own!” she says. “It doesn’t have to be some huge and terrible drama, thank god.”

“Small blessings,” Pat says. And then he groans. “God, I’m gonna have to _tell people_. Hey, what’s up, I’m getting divorced, also I’m gay, whoops!”

Simone gives a sympathetic wince. “Yeah, I think no matter what way we pitch it people are gonna look at you. Which sucks, and I’m sorry. If only people recognized being aromantic as an identity and if my phone didn’t autocorrect it to ‘a romantic,’ people might understand a little better. But the people who matter most will understand, or do their best to. And _I_ understand. And so do you. And that’s really the most important thing.”

“Yeah,” Pat says quietly.

“What’re you thinking?”

“Just… what’s gonna change. Y’know?”

“A lot of things, probably. But a lot of things won’t. You’re still my best friend. I still care about you a _ton_. Even if one of us moves out or something — oh Patrick it’s okay we can work that out when things are less emotional — my point is, my point is… I’m never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run — _mmph_ —”

Simone pries Pat’s hand off her mouth, giggling, her wonderful laugh that brings him such joy, and his attempt at stony-faced disapproval cracks into a smile.

“We can do what we’re ready for, when we’re ready for it. We make the rules. No one else. Got it?” she says.

“Got it,” he echoes.

“Are you still okay with, like, physical contact? ‘Cause I’d like to cuddle, if you’re into it,” she says. It’s funny she asks, because they’ve been holding each other for about seventy-five percent of the conversation, but sweet too. He appreciates her so goddamn much.

“Please,” Pat says.

They curl up beneath the covers, facing each other, pressed close together.

“We’d make a really shitty romance novel,” Simone says.

“I’d need, like, a hot gay lover to make it a good one,” Pat jokes, with a wan smile.

“Ooh, steamy,” Simone says. “Let me know when you get one.”

“God, Simone, I wouldn’t even know where to _start_.”

“Probably don’t tell ‘em you’re married,” Simone suggests, to make Pat snicker. “Oh, here’s some questions to think about. One: are we going to see other people now? Two: are you in any way at all interested in continuing to have sex, or should I be pursuing other methods?”

“What, like taking custody of all the vibrators?”

“_Exactly_ like that.”

Pat sighs. “Good questions. I’d say… maybe let’s hold off, on the seeing other people thing, just a little bit ‘till we’ve got everything straightened — _pff_ — ‘straightened’ out more. As for question two… that’s a good question. I do, like, enjoy having sex with you —”

“Yeah, ‘cause I know _all_ the weird shit you’re into.”

He feels his face heat up. “Don’t call me out like this. But, uh, I dunno? I like it but I don’t want you to feel — I mean — I —”

“Pretend you don’t have to worry about stepping on my toes for a minute and tell me what you actually want.”

“I’d like to, I think. Not right now. But I think — yknow — sometimes might be nice.”

“I agree,” she says. She kisses his cheek. “Sometimes you just gotta blow off some steam with someone who knows just how you like to get fucked.”

Pat sighs. “Please don’t tell Freud on me about how I like to get pegged.”

Simone bursts out laughing. “Oh my god! I didn’t even _think_ about that —”

“Good! Good good good stop thinking about it _noooo Simone please my dignity_ —”

“What dignity!” she says, and tickles him until he’s almost crying laughing and finally pushes her away. “I love you, you disaster of a man.”

“I love you too, Simone.” He takes her hand again, squeezes it, and she squeezes back. A reminder she’s there for him, as he is for her.

“If it helps,” she says, “I’m not worried about us. We’ve gotten this far. No matter what’s next for us, I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine. We’re gonna be okay.”

“Yeah,” Pat says, “yeah. We are.”

He hugs her tight; she hugs him back.

They don’t let go, not for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> im TENDER


End file.
